A landmark Colorado law that ties teacher evaluations to the progress of their students on achievement tests could help build momentum for a national movement that seeks to overhaul how instructors’ tenure and pay is earned, education leaders say.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Colorado’s law will hold teachers accountable for whether their students are learning, with 50% of a teacher’s evaluation based on students’ academic growth as measured partially by test scores. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing legislation that will change the way teachers are evaluated, but its prospects are less certain; the state’s teachers union strongly opposes it.

Colorado’s action comes amid a national debate over how to get the best teachers into the classroom and remove the ones who aren’t doing a good job.

Where are teacher effectiveness changes taking place?

Green: Changes approved Yellow: Change proposed Red: Change rejected

“It’s impossible to overstate just how significant this [Colorado] bill is,” said Tim Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a national nonprofit that released a report last year revealing how the vast majority of teacher evaluation systems fail to distinguish effective teachers from ineffective ones. “The bill is remarkable both in its content and its comprehensiveness. I think there is a good reason to believe that [more] change is coming.”

Tim Daly, President, The New Teacher Project

Under Colorado’s law, passed with bipartisan support and signed by Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. on Thursday, even tenured teachers who are found to be “ineffective” for two consecutive years could lose job protections, and possibly their jobs.

Colorado’s law also reflects a wholesale change in attitudes toward evaluating teachers. Like many states, Colorado is hoping to bolster its chances in the Race to the Top grant competition before second-round applications are due June 1. The program rewards states for assessing teacher effectiveness, and Colorado has $175 million at stake.

Colorado State Senator Mike Johnston

Democratic State Sen. Mike Johnston, a former school principal who is deeply involved with education reform issues, sponsored Colorado’s bill, which passed the House 36-29 and was approved several hours later by the Senate with a 27-8 vote.

Approval in Colorado is a promising sign, said Bonnie Reiss, California’s secretary of education: “Every time our state Legislature sees another state taking leadership in this important reform area, it does increase our likelihood” of passing the bill.
Support from Democrats and, at the last minute, from a teachers union in Colorado represents a major political shift at a time when states are facing huge budget cuts that could mean thousands of teacher layoffs.

The teacher’s union is vehemently opposed to the bill introduced by state Sen. Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) and approved by the Senate Education Committee in April. Union leaders, who are paying for television ads urging opposition, argue that it would gut due-process rights and scapegoat teachers during bad economic times. “Rather than focusing on the real problems facing our schools, like larger class sizes and cuts to student programs, this bill simply blames teachers,” the California Teachers Assn. said in a statement.

Supporters argue that performance should dictate personnel decisions. The bill would allow schools to lay off, assign, transfer and rehire teachers and administrators based on effectiveness and subject-matter needs — a radical departure from the current seniority-based policy.

Schwarzenegger is hopeful that California’s legislators will come together and support the bill, which he believes would bring better teachers to schools that most need them, said Andrea McCarthy, a deputy press secretary. “The single most important factor to student achievement is having a great teacher in the classroom.”

The governor’s push for the bill comes as the cash-strapped state is also making a second attempt to win Race to the Top dollars. In the hopes of making the state more competitive, Reiss has sent a letter urging all county and district superintendents as well as charter school administrators to adopt specific reforms, including linking teacher evaluation to student growth; the unions are urging local affiliates not to sign on.

President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are actively encouraging teacher evaluation and tenure reform by tying them to federal funds, another sign of the changing politics of education reform.

In Colorado, the law attracted national attention in part because it bucked a trend of Republicans leading statewide efforts to implement merit pay and tenure reform. Democrats have largely sided with unions in opposition to these changes.

Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality

“It may be the first time ever that Democrats pushed an agenda that opposed the agenda of the teachers unions,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

And although teachers unions opposed the legislation in Colorado, the state chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, in an unexpected twist, endorsed it after securing several amendments that both the AFT and the Colorado Education Assn., an affiliate of the National Education Assn., had pushed.

“I truly believe that we need to be leaders in education reform,” said Brenda Smith, president of AFT Colorado.

The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, remains opposed, although Colorado Education Association President Beverly Ingle called it “much improved from the initial bill.”

Florida Governor Charlie Crist

Teacher tenure legislation has proven challenging nationally. Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist vetoed a teacher reform bill that would have enacted performance pay and eliminated tenure after he was besieged by opposition.

Delaware, one of only two states to receive money in the first round of the Race to the Top competition, has already revamped its teacher evaluation systems. New York and New Jersey have announced plans to do the same.

All of the teacher effectiveness bills vary in how far they go. For example, in Illinois, which finished fifth in the first round of Race to the Top competition, legislators have been criticized for not changing state law that allows seniority to prevail in teacher layoffs.

Colorado’s passage of the bill provided weeks of political drama and compromise. Van Schoales, executive director of the Education Reform Now, called the bill’s politics the most contentious he’s seen in the state. He described watching Democratic Rep. Mark Ferrandino break into tears while recounting his decision to support the bill. “I’ve never seen a legislator sob like this,” Schoales said.

Mike Miles, superintendent of the Harrison school district in Colorado Springs, was less focused on the politics. He wondered why it took so long to have tough conversations about rating teachers and principals on the academic growth of their students.

“It suggests to me, that we needed, as a profession, people to put some stakes in the ground and say look, here is the mark, now let’s talk about how we get there.”

Eliza Krigman is a staff reporter at the National Journal based in Washington, DC. For the past year, she has written extensively on federal education issues and moderated an expert education blog. A version of this story appeared here in the Los Angeles Times on May 23, 2010.

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